There is an interesting post here about the changes that have been made to the rendering engine in Outlook 2007. Not everyone is happy.

The crux of it I have quoted below:

Outlook 2007 now uses the HTML parsing and rendering engine from Word 2007 to display HTML message bodies, and also does not use the same standards as Internet Explorer 7.

The move has not been well received by some bloggers like SitePoint's Kevin Yank, who says in a recent post that this new rendering engine is far worse than the previous one.

"With this release, Outlook drops from being one of the best clients for HTML email support to the level of Lotus Notes and Eudora, which, in the words of Campaign Monitor's David Grenier, "are serial killers making our email design lives hell."

and

But SitePoint's Yank disputes this, saying that he tested the two public beta versions of Outlook 2007 and "knew there was something screwy going on. Many of the newsletters I subscribed to had become unreadable, and SitePoint's own publications were looking decidedly unhealthy."

The solution? Use Microsoft's Outlook 2007 HTML and CSS validator tool, "to tell you which parts of your lean, mean HTML emails need to be replaced with old-fashioned HTML sludge. As a second step, you may want to consider giving your Outlook-based readers an easy way to switch to text-only email. Bring on PDF email. I'm ready," he says.

I don't want this to turn into a "let's bash Microsoft / Outlook" thread, but an opportunity for PocoMail / Barca? And keep an eye on that line that says "Bring on PDF email".

Last edited by robin on Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There's also an interesting post on A Guide to CSS Support in Email. This is dated March 2006 so it would be interesting to see how it shapes up now, perhaps Slaven should get PocoMail into the next comparison?